quasi-experimental evaluation designs

One of the more common requests I receive from colleagues in the World Bank’s operational units is support on evaluating the impact of a large cash transfer program, usually carried out by the national government. Despite the fact that our government counterparts are much more willing to consider a randomized promotion impact evaluation (IE) design these days, still this is often not possible. This could be, for example, because it has already been announced that the program is going to be implemented in certain areas starting on a certain date.